Woke up to the sound of my roommateshowering. I meant to get up earlier. But I set my alarm for 5:28 p.m., not 5:28 a.m. as if I was fooling anyone.
Simon peed on the floor and ruined my cell phone charger. It’s dark and wet, gross outside. I bus to class.
There’s an ad at the student bookstore that says something about college being “the best years of your life." It seems not only like a lie, but depressing. How would you know when they were, and where would you point the gun when they ended?

At times I liken this to a job in some ways: Some employees come and go. Some employees put forth more effort than others. Some have titles that others don't feel they deserve. The employees bicker about the management, the management bicker about the employees. People keep scrawling things on the bathroom stalls.

In other ways, I don't. For those of you who are new to it, there is no real way to explain it, although some analogies come close. It's just another website, but boy howdy can it change you.

I didn't know this place existed until Alpheus dragged me here kicking and screaming. He discovered this place through a stile project entry, I believe. I was one of the few people that managed to stick around past the initial novelty/trolling (I did not participate in that, as I had no idea that stile was the reason I got here). This place lured me in ways that no other site managed to - it seduced me with words.

How intoxicating it is, to have almost immediate feedback on your thoughts, fingers plinking on the keyboard and hitting that shiny button that submits your write-up. Forget XP, or all of that. I never really understood it when I first arrived and even now it is of little use to me. To me it was all about that feedback.

Everthing2 also drove me to be a better writer. Or rather, the people who contributed here did. I would feed off of the words of others like so many fine apéritifs. When I first started contributing here, my contributions were little more than vignettes, scraps of thought spread on the page. I was a blank slate, and little by little, you all have seeped into me and helped fill in the lines. Some of you are long departed, but trust me, not forgotten.

Happy Birthday e2, you have been a vicious and cruel master but you made me bigger/better/smarter/insert option here. You made me laugh, I mean laughter where you can't breathe and your sides are splitting from the happy you just can't contain. You made me cry, huge soppy tears that made me both pleased and ashamed to be crying. Listen, because this is the most important part: You introduced me to so very many wonderful people, and of all things I can never regret this. I can only hope I have given back even one tenth of what you have given me.

As a pre-teen, you are exactly where you ought to be - staggering on the edge of "Who am I? Who am I?" and balancing between "Shut up, you can't tell me what to do!" and "Please oh please can I please be a kid again?". And I am staggering between "Hey, remember when we were kids and the whole world was our playground? Let's have that back" and "Chin up, tuck in your shirt, give your best smile, no you cannot have more pie."

I hope I'm around to see what the next chapter brings. I hope you're around for it, too.

I can lay no claim to ten years as a user, E2, but I've been here a while. And I've avoided GTKY during that time, so hopefully I'm allowed a small, self-indulgent meander through some memories. Ten years. It's unreal. It is no exaggeration to claim that this website brought me up, and that it changed my life.

Eight point four years ago, I was a naive, geeky, 15 year old girl. My brother introduced me to a website, and its front page was a piece of writing that made me laugh. While that piece of writing left the site fairly rapidly (culled in the days of "earn your bullshit"), the fondness I first felt for this place has remained. Eight point four years later, with high school done, three degrees, various relationships, and the beginning of my career behind me, I can't imagine how much different my life would have been without this place. It is to E2 that I credit my remarkably non-emo teenage years and my sanity during exams. This place and its users shaped my personality, and I feel blessed to have been (and to still be) a part of its evolution.

Listen, E2: I still can't claim to understand you. I don't know what makes you tick, be it some of the most generous outpourings of love that this world has seen, or some of the most catty or heartbreaking moments in internet history. I've always tried to remain a fairly impartial observer to both sides, largely because of my love of privacy, and partially because I'm a hopeless idealist. I've never tried to leave this site. I can't imagine I ever will, for as long as it exists. This three dimensional type of writing is by far my favourite forum.

But listen, E2: I love you. I love the words you give me, kind and harsh. I love the advice you gave me as I grew up and started to figure out who I was as a person. I love the comments on nodes, the emails, the connections that exist through pixels and wires: completely illogical, and completely real. I love the fact that you keep me on my toes; that every time I sign online, there's a surprise. And I would like to take this moment to thank you.

Thank you for barnification, for civil wars, for raising the bar, for noding bullshit. Thank you for expanding my horizons, introducing me to music, arts, sciences, literature, poetry and everything in between. Thank you to the users who spent so many hours inspiring and helping me (I hope you know who you are). Thank you to all the people who gave their skills and patience to run this place - you are appreciated. Thank you to the fled noders - I miss you more than you realise. Thank you to the new noders, too - it's beautiful to watch you grow, and sift through our convoluted history, defining this place in your own terms.